Fossilized shark’s tooth, found by my sister-in-law.

The beach is a wonderful place for people who like to collect interesting things. When I’m out walking on the sand, I often see people carrying bags or buckets of shells. The shore offers an enormous variety of sizes, colors, and shapes, along with the possibilities for all sorts of craft projects.

Several members of my family like to hunt for fossilized shark’s teeth, and a “hunt” it is. They’re surprisingly numerous but difficult to spot because small black chips of shells can look remarkably like the. Spotting a shark’s tooth takes a trained eye, considerable time, and extraordinary patience. I’ve never mastered the trick of it, possibly due to lack of patience, but also likely because my poor eyesight makes it difficult to discern the right shapes in the sand.

I do have an interest in sea glass, but a nice piece is a rare find these days, probably because more people are looking for it and fewer glass bottles are being used. If a relative does happen on a nice piece they’ll save it for me, and I even found one myself a year or so ago. I don’t spend a lot of time hunting for it.

In fact, I don’t really try to collect anything on the beach other than ideas and experiences. There are tons of treasures and I take pictures to remind me of all the interesting things I see. Some of them spark ideas for stories. Some of them just spark awe and amazement. All of them give me a unique pleasure in just contemplating them, but I don’t need to keep them. Below are some of the most interesting things I found and saw on the beach during our week’s visit.

(You can click on the pictures for larger versions.)

Shell bed

Pen shell. An ordinary, very plain-jane shell unless it’s wet and has the sun shining on it when it glitters like a Christmas ornament.

Jellyfish that washed up on the beach

The way the foam from the ocean blows around is fascinating. This only seems to happen at low tide.

The receding water carves interesting patterns in the sand. This, too, seems to happen only at low tide.

These fishermen caught a Bonnethead shark. It’s actually fairly common to catch “Bonnies” there. They removed the hook and tossed it back into the ocean.

More info about the Bonnethead shark: Bonnethead – Wikipedia

More info on Pen Shells: Pinnidae – Wikipedia

Shell be